'Create in India, not just Make in India': TASL CTO Murlidharan on next step in defence self-reliance

India's defence self-reliance must go beyond manufacturing to designing and owning technology, says TASL CTO R Muralidharan, who flags gaps in high-end chips, sensors and critical materials. He called for a shift from licensed production to designing systems in India.

India's defence self-reliance cannot stop at manufacturing military equipment domestically and must extend to designing, developing and owning the technology behind those systems, according to R Muralidharan, Chief Technology Officer of Tata Advanced Systems Ltd (TASL) and Professor of Practice at IIT Tirupati.

"Atmanirbhar Bharat does not only mean Make in India. It also should include Create in India. Create means conceive and design in India," Muralidharan told LiveMint in an exclusive interview.

He said India has developed the manufacturing capabilities needed to produce several defence systems, but continues to face a gap in the know-how and know-why needed to modify, upgrade and adapt those systems to Indian requirements.

"So, today, we have manufacturing technology to manufacture systems as it is. But we do not have the know-how and know-why to upgrade it, adapt it to the Indian requirements. So, this is a big gap," he said.

"We need to start designing from scratch with the know-how and know-why so that we can upgrade from time to time cost-effectively, achieving self-reliance," Muralidharan said.

"It is a must that we should design things in India, then manufacture them, not just manufacture," he added.

"Today, the only gap in technology is the high-end hardware chips. We do not have the chips and sensors that are required to build our own equipment," he said.

"As on date, we have a large gap of hardware chips and critical raw materials. Otherwise, we have the talent, the design capability, the software expertise, the team, etc."

He said defence technology should not be viewed only through the software lens, with hardware and materials forming an equally important part of technological sovereignty.

"Technology is not only in the software, or embedding software, which is important, but critical materials and the chips are equally important," Muralidharan said.

"My personal view is that the private industries, except a few of them, are not investing in IP," Muralidharan said.

"They are into licensed manufacturing. And the people who make IP are very few private industries and the DRDO in defence domain."

He, however, described licensed manufacturing as a possible first step towards deeper technological capability.

"Many of them also import licences and manufacture, which may be a first step. Slowly, we are going to do it on our own. So, step by step is good," he said.

Muralidharan said TASL's own focus has been on developing indigenous capabilities through sustained investment in R&D.

"Our (TASL) strength is R&D. We have been investing in R&D, developing our own solutions, collaborating with the DRDO and developing. We are totally indigenous," he said.

"No technology transfers for the basic systems that we do, except a few," he added.

"Our DNA is in R&D. We invest heavily, not just now, but for the last 40 years."

"We don't have many LLMs of our own as yet, but we are generating them. We should be developing our own SLMs too. We can call it sovereign language models or small-language models," he said.

"It is our own data that has to be used to train the Models that we need to deploy," Muralidharan said.

"Good quality local data pertaining to a specific application is a must to train the Models for their performance."

"So it is mandatory that India develops its own AI solutions and infuses or embeds them into our applications, which we are doing in a big manner, not talking too much about it," he added.

"Because of supply chain vulnerability, you do not get the chips. Second, if you buy a chip, how are we sure that it is a secure safe chip?" he said.

"How can one check whether it does not have any backdoors or kill switches?"

He said India's dependence on foreign chips extends beyond defence platforms to communications.

"Today in India, every communication is through a foreign chip, including your cell phone," Muralidharan said.

"We do not have a sovereign communication chip, and for our country to be really sovereign, we need to have our own trustworthy chips that can communicate securely."

"The private sector is very keen on export. That's where they can get the full returns on the large investments," he said.

"Today we are exporting a lot, not only the DPSUs, a number of private companies too. The exports are exceeding the MoD's expectations."

"Earlier, it was globalisation. Now it is coming to localisation. Every country wants to be self-sufficient. And that's exactly what India is doing," Muralidharan said.

He pointed to government initiatives, including the quantum, AI and materials missions, as part of a broader push towards technological self-reliance.

"Supply chain vulnerability can be eliminated only by self-sufficiency."

"So, at the end of the day, if a country has to be really self-reliant, it has to have all the things in-house, very minimal from outside," he said.

"Slowly and gradually, every country is realising this, and globalisation has gone; it is now local. Local design, manufacturing and everything else. Luckily, we are going towards that."

"The government policies are aligned to that, and the private, public, and all the industries are also gearing up for that, and we have the right talent. It is just the capital and motivation that's required."